The Government has introduced plans to strip away vital housing protections from people seeking sanctuary in the UK.

If the proposal passes, it would mean that landlords no longer have to prove that their properties have safe electrical and gas appliances if they are renting to people seeking asylum, and could rent out overcrowded accommodation. People seeking sanctuary would be placed at much greater risk of fire, carbon monoxide poisoning and dangerous overcrowding. The higher risk of fire is made worse by the very real possibility of arson attacks targeting asylum accommodation.

Essentially, the proposal means that landlords would be able to rent out properties to asylum-seekers that are so unsafe that it would be illegal to rent them to British citizens. 

Along with the Chartered Institute of Housing, RAMFEL, Crisis and the No Accommodation Network, JCWI has prepared a briefing for MPs and Peers discussing our key concerns about the proposal. 

Read the briefing for MPs

Read the briefing for Peers

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Read a summary of the briefing below:

The government has laid a draft statutory instrument which removes licensing requirements from houses in multiple occupation (HMOs) used as asylum accommodation. Under the changes, landlords renting properties to asylum-seekers would no longer have to register those properties with local authorities, for a two-year period when the statutory instrument is in force. 

Mandatory HMO licensing was introduced following a 20-year campaign beginning in 1982, after eight people died and over a 100 were left homeless in a horrific bedsit fire in Notting Hill, West London. In the period running up to the Housing Bill, later the Housing Act 2004, the government commissioned research into the fire safety risks in multi-occupied dwellings. It concluded that that in all houses converted into bedsits, the annual risk of death per person was six times higher than in comparable single occupancy houses and was 16 times higher in houses comprising three or more storeys.

Under these changes, local authorities would not be able to require landlords to comply with the licence conditions which ensure that basic minimum standards are met in HMOs that are being used to house asylum seekers, and its powers to intervene where the health and safety of the residents is put at risk would be severely curtailed.

We are concerned that this will lead to problems such as unsafe gas and electrical appliances; high risk of fire; overcrowding – including of children and vulnerable people; unsanitary conditions; poor quality accommodation lacking basic decency; and poor or inadequate housing management standards.

Further, this will incentive existing landlords and temporary accommodation providers to switch their properties away from their existing uses to asylum accommodation, which may be more profitable. This could include properties which may not have met HMO standards previously. As well as leading to an increase in substandard properties, this could exacerbate local housing and homelessness pressures.